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Tap's Tips
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Excerpted from the Introduction: It keeps happening to me. I'm sitting on the bank of a
trout stream in Vermont or Montana. Or I'm hunting quail in Georgia or
woodcock in New Hampshire or ducks on Cape Cod. Or I'm launching my canoe
on a Maine lake or wading a beach on Martha's Vineyard. Or I'm poking
around a fly shop or shooting sporting clays. I meet a stranger. He might
be a college kid, or a genuine Old Timer, or anywhere in between. We talk, of course. We know what we have in common. Sooner or later we exchange names and shake hands. Then, always, the stranger cocks his head and says, "Did you say Tapply?" I smile and nod. I know what's coming. "Tap Tapply?" Now he's grinning. "Tap's Tips? I grew up reading your stuff. When I was a kid, it was the first thing I turned to when my new issue of Field & Stream arrived. I used to clip out your columns. Somewhere in my mother's attic there's a big notebook stuffed with them. You were like my favorite uncle. What an honor to meet you." "Sorry," I have to tell the stranger. "That's not me. Tap was my father." "Your father? Well, lucky you." Yes, indeed. Lucky me. In 1964, when he started putting this book together, Tap had been writing his monthly column for fourteen years. That's a full career in the magazine business. Six Tips and two Notebook articles per month -- it added up to 1008 Tips and 336 Notebooks, give or take a month's worth or two. Anybody who knows the agony of trying to come up with just one good idea for a monthly column will appreciate what those numbers mean. Tap had committed himself to thinking up eight ideas every month, and he'd been doing it since September, 1950. Not just any old eight ideas, either, but six fresh and useful ideas that could be explained fully and clearly in five typed lines adding up to between forty and fifty words (those were the Tips) and two more expansive ideas that required between 400 and 500 words (the Notebook items). He did it, month after month, and only those of us who lived with him appreciated how challenging the job was for a man with Tap's high standards. He didn't steal ideas. He didn't recycle old ones. He was always grateful when his readers or his sporting companions suggested ideas to him, but he never took them at face value. Every idea had to be thoroughly tested in the outdoors before Tap would pass it along. This meant that he had to do a lot of fishing and hunting and camping and boating and cooking and dog handling and trapping and ice fishing and snowshoeing. He called it field-testing. Research. The truth was, he loved to spend time in the out-of-doors, and the monthly column was a neat excuse -- or rationalization -- whenever he felt he needed one. Most of the time, I got to go along with him. Lucky me. |
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